Draft Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

David Drew Excerpts

Wednesday 13th March 2019 General Committees

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am delighted to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McDonagh. It is a pity that you have to be here rather than in Cheltenham, but we all have to make our sacrifices. It might be a bit wild and windy there anyway.

I welcome the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the hon. Member for Macclesfield. I thought we might get the new farming Minister, the right hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Mr Goodwill); I have not yet had the opportunity for any exchanges with him, but I am sure that that will save for another day. I have just a few points to make—the Minister will be relieved to hear that the Opposition will not vote against the draft regulations.

I know that we are bundling up statutory instruments. Because of the time constraints we are under, that is something that we have to face, for good or bad, but we are now bundling up SIs within an SI. With the best will in the world, I do not understand what natural mineral water, spirit drinks, food labelling, aromatised wine, GMOs and animal health have got to do with each other. It is quite interesting how the civil service has come up with these portmanteau SIs, where we try to look at a range of different issues, which may not in themselves appear to be very important but are in totality.

I will dwell for a minute on animal health, looking at the explanatory memorandum. The bits on animal health are largely about the transference or transmission of equidae—I hope everyone knows what they are—and their semen, ova and embryos. As for animal health, at the end of the memorandum it says that no consultation was undertaken

“given that no change to policy is being made”.

My ears pricked up when the Minister said there were three weeks of consultation overall. That is not a great deal of time for some of the changes that are implied here. Does that matter? Those of us who were around at the time of the bovine spongiform encephalopathy outbreak will remember that we had to ban the export of semen because that was one of the products that was caught up in the beef on the bone ban. It matters when it matters. That did matter because it cost us billions of pounds in lost exports.

We have to be very wary about what we put through here today. We put down our usual caveat that we are doing this at an enormous rush. No one really knows the implications of what we are doing because none of us—certainly in the Opposition—has had the opportunity to delve in depth into some of the changes. I know the Government say that there are no changes, that this is a cut and paste job, but we have to rely on the cut and paste being right and work on the presumption that, as time moves on, we are going to vary from the EU, enhance the process or, dare I say, do less. That is a concern.

I have a number of questions to put to the Minister. The one we usually start with is that there is no costing in the SI, so we do not know the implications or the impact, not just on Government, which must oversee this, but on the industry. With regard to changes to labelling, we are going to be faced by variability in the labelling regime. I am interested to know how the Government intend to approach that with regard to information for consumers. We know that labels differ at the moment but there is some commonality through our membership of the EU. If we leave on 29 March, that will have to change.

We could spend the whole hour and a half on GMOs, although colleagues will be pleased to hear that I will not. This is a very controversial area. My starting point is that we have four constituent parts of the UK. It is a pity there is no Scottish representative here but I think Scotland has gone as far as a GM ban for the nation. Will that happen again in future or will we have to accept that the UK Government are now sovereign on that matter?

That will make a difference because the French in particular will never allow any genetically modified product into their country. We are more lax—we have allowed animal feed to come in, particularly from north America. That does not mean we can feel satisfied that that will be accepted, because the French will ban our exports or re-exports if we are not careful.

The regulations will almost certainly demand additional bureaucratic observance, scrutiny and investigation. It would be interesting to know what additional work the Government have done on the GM issue. That matters, because any attempt to sign a free trade deal with the United States will bring it to the fore in the public’s perception. Those of us who were around at the time know that, whatever one’s views on the science, the public had a very clear view on GM. They did not want it and they made that very clear through their representatives. Our policy, which we have kept to, is that we do not grow GM crops in this country.

It would be interesting to know what environmental impacts the Government think these changes will have. The Minister rightly said that nothing will change at the moment, but it would be interesting to know what “at the moment” means, because clearly there can be changes in the future. That will be very important, in terms of reporting procedures and our capacity to assess.

Several issues were raised by the bodies that are most concerned about this statutory instrument. I declare my usual interest: I am one of the British Veterinary Association’s advocates. It is a non-paying role, but I welcome that relationship. The BVA is looking at the wider issues relating to the e-petition on pre-slaughter stunning that is doing the rounds at the moment. That is a very controversial issue. The BVA asked me, “How does this relate to some of the changes we are making?” Not very much, it could be argued, but we will have a new regime. That is important, because one of the things that we are looking at today is clarity of labelling. Whether there was stunning will have to be spelled out very clearly. Is that something that the British Government are ready for? Will they condone it and encourage it in what will be brought forward? How does that relate to our export markets, which depend on commonalities between regimes? It may be that we are very different.

The BVA’s final point is that the UK Government should legislate to ensure that imported goods have the same clarity of labelling as home-produced goods. What resources are the British Government putting in place to ensure that is the case? That relates to the matter of border inspection posts. It is not clear from the SI or the explanatory memorandum what additional checks the Government intend to put in place to ensure that what they are told is coming into the country is actually what comes into the country. For animal products, that is the biggest threat we face. Anyone who has been to New Zealand will know that they basically strip-search people to make sure they do not bring in anything that could have any kind of pathogenic impact, because they know that that could wipe out their livestock industry. They are incredibly careful about who comes in and what they bring, and if people do things they should not do, they deal with them pretty savagely. What additional resources are the Government putting into border inspection posts to ensure those things do not happen? At the very least, we must do everything we can to prevent them from happening.

The biggest problem of the lot, of course, is the Northern Ireland border—not just the backstop, but the mechanism by which we ensure the movement of food back and forth. I have used the example of Baileys many times before, for which milk goes back and forth seven times. At least some additional checking will be involved.

Finally, let me look a bit more intensively at the GM issue. It would be helpful if the Government stated today that they will not alter their policy on GM. Regardless of the position after 29 March, it would be helpful if we had a clear statement that we do not grow GMOs in this country and that we do not import GMOs, other than because they happen to be in animal feed—for all sorts of reasons, there is not a lot we can do about that.

I have touched already on the fact that the drafting of the SI could allow for considerable differences between the four nations of the UK. The Minister said he had consulted the other Administrations, bar Northern Ireland, with which interaction is at official level. It would be interesting to know whether there is any divergence on GMO policy. As I said, from memory, Scotland had a very clearly negative position on GM. Is that the message that came back from the Minister’s discussions?

Let me make a final couple of points on standards and regulations. Somebody has to ensure not only that we have a clear statement of official controls between us and any single market we may work through, but that we are very clear about the relationship between the four constituent parts of the United Kingdom. It would be interesting to know what additional regime will have to be put in place to ensure that border inspection posts take cognisance of what is happening in the different parts of the United Kingdom. That will be crucial, because the last thing we want is a disease outbreak shortly after 29 March. If that happened, the finger would be pointed very clearly at its being Brexit related. It may be completely unrelated, but that accusation would be made.

I accept that the Minister may have to write to me about one or two of those points, but this is a quite important piece of secondary legislation. It is a hotch-potch of different things, and some parts of it will have an ongoing impact. I hope the Minister realises that, although we will not vote against the instrument, issues such as the environmental liability directive, which I have mentioned before, will come back in one form or another. We need to look not just at individual SIs but at the totality of the way we protect the country from disease outbreaks. Obviously, if we get that wrong, we will not just be the poorer but face repercussions in the wider world, because other countries will take action against us, as they did over BSE.